Bancilhon said, "We keep our principles. We are true to the open source model. We will keep having free downloads and a business model consistent with that."

He also said he expects SUSE to start using Gnome as its primary desktop now that Novell, which had already bought Ximian, has acquired the company. Red Hat is Gnome-oriented, and has developed its own "Bluecurve" desktop. Of the "bg three" corporate-produced Linux distributions, this would leave Mandrake as the only one with primary loyalty to KDE.

SUSE has traditionally been a major KDE supporter and has employed a number of KDE developers.

NewsForge asked Bancilhon what would happen to KDE -- and KDE-dependent Mandrake -- if SUSE stopped supporting its developers. "I don't know," he said. "I hope (by the time that happens) we'll have more room to support them."